Credit due for stay at home parents
SO being a stay-at-home mum or dad is considered an actual job title?
Linkedin was praised from the heights this week for introducing the titles “Stay At Home Mum”, “Stay At Home Dad” or “Stay At Home parent”.
The idea being, parents who stay in the home minding kids get to explain their months or years missing from their CV.
Would the term, “Glorified stay-athome Slave” not be more apt?
From wiping bums in between Zooms, to refereeing cat fights to serving meals and singing the beauties to sleep, the job at home requires mega training (which does not come in any manual or college course).
From entertainer to emotional therapist and lifecoach, the stay-at-home person is the master negotiator, feeder, cook, the whole nine yards.
If lockdown hadn’t happened, parents who work outside the home would never truly get to see how little headspace parents who work in the home get.
It’s bloody exhausting, extremely worthwhile, and when your kids give back you melt.
There’s no other feeling of love like it really, but it’s truly the most emotional job in the world – good and bad.
It’s far more impressive a job than what fancy pants CEOS of emerging on-trend start-ups do.
Off the back of the Linkedin reveal, the comments on social media were full of the joys of how luxurious an option it is for the elite few to stay at home.
Everyone from Tubs to the Elaine Show were praising the platform for being so progressive.
The real holiday we’ve learnt from lockdown is, in fact, going to work.
I used to cycle off into the distance to our old offices on the southside of Dublin.
The train journey felt like the closest thing I’d get to the Orient Express. I’d use the time to switch off and meditate!
The cycle to the train was escapism; I adore my kids but minding them is by and large harder than going to the office.
I remember the fab Deirdre O’kane saying she couldn’t wait to get back to comedy after minding her own kids.
The daily grind of routine-based childcare can feel like domestic drudgery.
Until now there has been little or no recognition for taking the time out to rear kids.
The caring professions at large are just kind of brushed under the carpet.
It’s as if someone has to do it, rather than any get any real kudos for it.
My mate has been minding her kids since they were born and quit her corporate gig, choosing to mind her children instead of shipping them off to a childcare pro to do the drudge work.
But she gets constantly quizzed at the school gates by nosy working mums wondering if she’s not dying to escape back to the workplace.
There shouldn’t be a contest between either job, they’re both valuable.
As a mum who works outside the home I used to have a clear divide between life and work. Now all the lines are blurred.
What’s refreshing about Linkedin is finally whether we stay at home or go to work, we’re all being validated as worthwhile.